The history of the present king of Great Britain (George 3rd) is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states" .
In my opinion, to suggest that the revolutionary war was merely a product of a quest for liberty is oversimplifying the issue. The quest for liberty was a by-product of the fact that by 1770 the colonists had begun to see themselves as exclusively American. In short, they had an inflated sense of self-importance and had lost touch with their place within the imperial pecking order. The Anglo-American colonies suffered no great economic malaise, nor did they revolt expressing social protests of a threatened or impoverished mass population. The revolution can be identified as a conflict of perceptions, almost exclusively concerned with politics and constitutional rights, between the ancien regime of the British Empire and the latent logic of radical Whig thinking. I shall argue in this essay that the colonists had no major crushing imperial shackles to cast off in search of a "quest for liberty". In reality it was the newfound American identity, which conflicted with the traditional place which the colonists held in the grand scheme of the British Empire. Here lies the basis of my argument. I hope to justify this statement by examining the polarised mindsets of the Colonists and of the British.
"He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained, and when so suspended. He has utterly neglected to attend to them" The colonists believed the interest of prosperity of ordinary people and their pursuit of happiness should be the main goal of society and government. This of course did not fit in with the crowns view of its colonies. To be part of the empire a subject's duty was to harbour all his birth derived commitments to further the cause of the British Empire.
